Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and a Biblical Perspective to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. Our tools constantly change; our task doesn’t; we can help.

Never forget the people who don’t have access to the easily created communication channels

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After writing an article for Christian Computing Magazine on ways to save money in your church communication programs, I got an email with a question that I know many churches struggle with. The question in shortened from was, "Is it OK to do away with our print newsletter? We'd save so much money if we just put it on the web." As I was putting together the answer, I realized that it is a topic that would be useful to share with all of you.

Though I can totally understand where the woman is coming from who wrote the question, as always, there is more to it than simply saving money, doing away with a print version and putting it all on the web. I'm working on a larger book that deals with this issue, but here is a helpful section from part of it:

Why keep printing some materials:

It is very difficult to take time to do a print postcard for the three people who don’t have internet access when fifty other people in the class are so easy to reach via email. Or to make a copy of the newsletter (in large print at that) and mail it out to the ten people who vow never to use a computer when everyone else in the congregation can get access to it on the church website.

Jesus left us a very clear example of what to do in these situations. He told the story of the shepherd who went after the one little sheep who wandered off.

Jesus isn’t nearly as concerned about the efficiency of our newsletter delivery as he is that we care for the wandering little sheep just as much as he does. That little sheepie was probably a naughty little sheepie and wandered off for no good reason. Jesus still went after him and carried him home lovingly.

Sometimes we might feel that some folks in the church make our communication tasks more difficult just because they are onery—and that might be true. But Jesus still expects us to love and serve them, just as much as the rest of the congregation.


No matter what the cost, people are always the most important consideration, no matter what the cost.

Don't be too quick to do away with your TV ministry

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Recently I heard about a church that wanted to discontinue its television ministry. Though they acknowledged it was watched primarily by the elderly and shut-in, they did not feel it was cost-effective any longer. They wanted to direct all the funds to their internet ministry.  The situation prompted me to remember....

More than a lifetime ago for my nephew who is grown, married, and has a son of his own, I was religion reporter for the Colorado Springs SUN newspaper. In this Vatican of America, home to over 100 Christian organizations, reporting on religion involved much more than retelling stories about the variety of pies at the local church supper. Sometimes I got to interview interesting people in the Christian world and one week my assignment was to interview Robert Schuller.

I was ready for it, with what in my mind were insightful questions that would confirm my pre-determined opinion and expose what a disgrace he was to the Christian faith. I had earlier come to that conclusion as a reader of the Wittenberg Door, a sort of counter-culture Christian magazine of the 1970's, that had recently featured an article on the financial excesses of the building of the Crystal Cathedral. Social justice for the poor was important to me and the article detailed how many hungry kids each pane of glass would feed and similar statistics on the equivalent mission's work that each part of the structure could fund.

{+}

I felt so self-righteous as I drove to the interview. Schuller started his church in a drive-in theater for goodness sakes. What kind of a pastor was that, I thought in the passionate judgementalism that comes from inexperience in real-world evangelism and the arrogant, ignorant authority of youth.

My editor told me I had to go to a bookstore where he was signing books and I could interview him when he was finished with the book signing. I got there and was directed to a chair near his book signing table and told I could wait there until he was finished. I'd called ahead, he had been signing books for hours already, it was late in the day, and I timed my arrival for what I assumed would be close to the time he'd finish. I was highly irritated and impatient when I saw the line out the door and around the block of people waiting to see him. This was going to take hours I grumbled, not quite quietly. Schuller must be tired, he'd been at it all day. I thought maybe he'd close it up. He had every right to big, mega-star preacher that he was.

He didn't. For almost three hours more I watched him sign books. His daughter was helping him. She would open the book and pass it to him. He didn't simply sign the book and push it to the waiting person. While his daughter got the new book, opened it and passed it over, he was totally focused on the people coming to him. For each one, he would pause, look  at the person, ask their name, chat a bit, sign the book. This is going to take forever at this rate, I realized.

Most of the people were not well-dressed. Many were senior citizens.

Again and again people would say, "You are my pastor, I don't know what I would do without you."

"I can't get to church," another would say, "But you encourage me."

Schuller would tell them it was his privilege to be their pastor. Sometimes he would stand up and give an elderly lady a hug. More than a few wanted their picture taken with him and he gladly obliged.

He never rushed anyone.  He would hold a trembling, older hand and pray. He prayed as if there was no one else in the room, except for that person in front of the book-signing table and the Lord. A large Latino family came up to the table and the father said something I couldn't hear to Schuller. Schuller stood up, walked around the table, laid his hands on the heads of the children and prayed.  He was blessing the children. He was their pastor. He took that responsibility very seriously.

I was trying very hard not to dissolve in tears. My assumptions melted. When it finally came time for our interview, I babbled and could only ask in a rather inane way why he did some of the seemingly outrageous things he did. He laughed and said, "People don't understand, I'm very conservative at heart, but the drive-in theater, the Crystal Cathedral,  is what the people need in Southern California. I'm their pastor. I do what I need to do to reach them for Jesus."

That's what we are all trying to do I realized then and now, simply trying to reach people for Jesus whether it's with a crystal cathedral or streaming video and podcasts. And though I'm all for technology (this is a blog after all), I think it would be a sad ministry mistake if the church that asked about about dropping their TV ministry (or any other church so enamored with current technology it forgets the older folks who don't even know the meaning of the term podcast) does drop its TV program. Yes, the web is a lot cheaper, a lot less trouble, but there are lots of folks who can't afford a computer with high speed access.

Sadly, cost-cutting probably means some churches will drop TV ministries. They will make self-justifying noises about how they will perhaps help the older folks, the poorer folks learn how to use the computer. May they will follow up and do it, maybe not.

But if they drop their TV service, I hope they tell their home-bound folks about Robert Schuller. He's still on TV, and I'm certain, still ready to be their pastor.

What is honestly unfortunate—communication channel pride

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7-29-09 the quote below appeared in USA TODAY in the article: “Governments tap into the power of  Twitter.” Tom Watson, a Labor Party, blogger said:

There are some very bright, digitally enabled civil servants who unfortunately have to write these documents for their bosses. . . who still get their secretaries to print off their e-mails so they can read them.

This situation is can be repeated in every office, governmental, educational, religious, in probably every nation in the world. No disagreement there. But here is what does bother me, not only in this instance are some of the unspoken attitudes expressed in this patronizing, snarky blog comment because they sadly sometimes seep into the church. My concerns:

The equating of digital skill with intelligence

It bothers me that the adjective “bright” is paired with “digitally enabled” and the implied contrast that follows with the bosses who, because their secretaries must print off emails, are obviously not bright because they are not digitally savvy.

This equating of intelligence with the ability to use digital equipment, if carried to it's logical conclusion would mean that the robots who assemble auto parts are far brighter and more intelligent, than the human who work in the factories. The robots after all, follow digital commands with complete understanding and without deviation. Humans make mistakes. That conclusion is obviously foolish when pushed to the extreme, but it is equally foolish in lesser degrees.

Equally bothersome is the pride that comes with the mastery of a new skill

Just because a secretary can use Twitter does not mean she has suddenly become “brighter”than her boss. There is a reason the boss is the boss and the skills required extend far beyond tweetability.

A bit of humility is in order. I couldn't help but wonder if the spelling ability, the penmanship ability, the ability to construct clear, lengthy business plans, and the ability to negotiate complex contracts, were also a superior skills of the secretary. I doubt it.

How this applies in the church

Our hearts are desperately wicked and our pride overwhelming. It is so easy to feel superior when we learn a new skill. So tempting to relegate those who don’t know the new skill as out of touch, and truth be told, not very bright.

No matter what the technology, we remain servants of Jesus. No matter what new skill we learn, we are always to consider others better than ourselves.

If we learn a new technology that is useful and others in the church don't know, understand, or use it, we have three choices:

  1. If it is something that might genuinely benefit them, we can offer to help them learn in a fun, upbeat way. I recently helped a young teacher with some online video creation I'd found great fun to do (www.animoto.com). Though I love this program, it isn't the greatest thing for everyone.
  2. If the person is unable because of time constraints, or other reasons, not able to learn or practice it, perhaps we can help them with it as a fellow worker and servant. Answering my husbands email (a bi-vocational pastor who works hard at a handyman job to work for a church for free) is the sort of work that falls into this category.
  3. We can wait, pray, be encouraging and available to engage others in the skill if and when time and interest are expressed.

The greatest commandment remains that to love each other and that involves all the demanding requirements of 1 Cor. 13, including patience, kindness, bearing all things, enduring all, never failing and related skills that are far more difficult to master than the latest computer communication skill. Mastering those character traits is what will make us bright, indeed.

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Note on context of this blog entry: I didn't write the cautions above as a technophobe. I've emailed since the days that email addresses were numbers; you can follow me on Twitter at yvonprehn. I wrote it to smack myself to never be proud of something I learn, but humble and thankful for the opportunity.

As you write for different communication channels, don’t change the content or look of your message

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Multi-channel communication creation
When you have to create communications for a variety of channels, you don't have to change content or design!

Writing multi-channel communications,creating content for both print and digitally forms is easier than many people who create it in church offices realize. That is because a common misconception in the church office is that if you create communications for various channels, e.g. brochure, web, email, brochure, you need to redo the content, restructure, rewrite, and reformat it for each channel. The truth is that you don't only not need to, but if you do change things in each channel, you will confuse people.

This article will explain:

  • what content details you need to include in every channel
  • the important visual elements that need to stay consistent
  • suggestions of what channels to use
  • how often you need to repeat your message

The essential content details that connect people with the ministry or event of your church

These details need to stay the same no matter what channel you use:

  • Name of event (clarify acronyms and church jargon)
  • Who the event is for
  • Time, including duration
  • Date
  • Location & how to get there
  • Contact information of person putting on the event
  • If childcare is provided
  • If there is a cost
  • Why people should want to attend, the text that explains and invites.

Getting these basic details together is often the hardest part of any communication process. Always remember that though these details seem small, they are the vital links that actually get people connected to an event. Once you have them, you simply need to repeat them.

Warnings:

You will always be tempted to leave some of them out thinking that people have already seen them, but remember that just because you have seen something 5-10 times as you put it into different communication channels--every piece you put out will always be the first piece some people see.

YOU MUST include all the important details in every piece you send out or with an easy link to them. NEVER (the shouting is intended here) tell people to "contact the church office for more information." Nobody has time to do that and even if they do, chances are that since you did not have the information when you first put out the communication, you don't have it now.

Getting the little details from people holding events and putting them into every channel of communication is some of the terribly hard servant work of church communications--but these details are essential to link people to life-changing events. For example, a newly-single mom at your church may want to come to an event, but if you are unclear about child care or child care costs she may not have the emotional courage to contact the church and ask about it.

In addition to consistency in your words, you also need visual consistency

What would you think of a team that changed its team colors to make the team "more interesting?" Doesn't make sense does it? It doesn't make any more sense for your church communications to change the items below to "make things more interesting."

Remember, people do not read church communications because they are "interesting" or not. They read them to find information, to meet needs to grow spiritually. It might not be as interesting for you to create consistent, but what might seem like boring designs, but consistency will serve your people well.

The visual content that needs to stay consistent includes:

  • Logo, if one has been created for the event or ministry
  • Key images or pictures.
  • Colors used in advertising, or tied to an event
  • Layout if unique

Once this core content is created: DO NOT CHANGE IT!

The content of your message needs to be consistent and don't change identifying colors or images.

The most successful advertising campaigns are ones where a company finds a slogan, image or person that works and they repeat it again and again. Some phrases have even become part of our vocabulary:

  • Can you hear me now?
  • Just do it!
  • Where's the beef?

Though we aren't attempting to become part of the national jargon, the same secret for success applies in church communications. For example, if your church has decided to use the slogan, "Everyone in One!" for a small group campaign, don't use that slogan in your printed material and "Never study alone!" as your theme on the website. People will be confused and think you are promoting two different programs.

Decide on your content and design and then take that content and design and put out the message using the various channels. For example, perhaps your content is a campaign to get the congregation involved in small groups. The communication team members, using the same content and perhaps similar colors and images, can create a variety of communications to carry out your ministry goals including:

  • a print brochure
  • a bulletin announcement and insert
  • a PowerPoint presentation
  • a website directory of small group times and locations
  • a print directory with the same information for the welcome center
  • cards for the various groups that people can take home
  • an email newsletter designed to inform and encourage people to sign up
  • social media that links to information and encourages sign-up

You may use more or less of it of the basic core of information (but always with the same look, color, slogan) in the various channels. For example on the web you might list every small group with detailed information about what is being studied and detailed directions on how to get to each small group, whereas in the church bulletin, you might simply give a list of topics, times, and a link to the website.

Finally, each channel should repeat the same message several times

Remember nobody sees all the channels and no one in your congregation will see each communication each time it is presented. Though the number changes with the authorities cited, most marketing experts agree that people need to see a message at least 5-7 times for it to register at all. We may be sick of repeating it, but you can be sure that after you send out the same message 10 times in at least 5 different channels, there will still be someone who says, "Thank you so much for that one (text, postcard, email, bulletin announcement)--I didn't know that was happening, but when I saw it, I went and it changed my life."

What’s the best channel to use to communicate the church’s message? Print? Multi-media? Web?

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Church communicators today are faced with a challenging choice of communication channels.

In print, bulletins, newsletters, brochures, flyers, and postcards continue to be produced. In addition, most churches today have entered the digital world and PowerPoint presentations, websites, email, and video are also an expected part of the communication ministry. What is essential, what works best, where churches should put their time and money, are questions I'm often asked.

There are no simple or easy answers to these questions, but this article discusses some of the important issues every church communicator needs to consider when putting together an effective church communication program.

We live in a time of multi-channel communication

Print and digital communications, in all of their various forms, make up current communication channels and it is first essential to understand that one communication channel is not more important than any other. It would be so much easier if we could say, "All we need is a website" or "Email is THE way to get across the church schedule" or "If it isn't in print on the refrigerator, it isn't happening" but we can't narrow our communication efforts to one or two channels today. All are needed to fully accomplish the communication ministries of any church.

It's natural to want to make the process simple, to focus on only one or two communication projects and then to ignore the rest. But we can't do that if we really want to reach people. What is important is not the communication channel itself, but how and when and in what way it reaches people with your message.

Examples of how various communication channels work

Various communication channels, even if they contain similar content, e.g. what's going on in the church this week, touch people, are taken in, make and impact, and are remembered and responded to in different ways. Following are some examples:

Printed church bulletin: It's touchable, tangible, and though often ignored by members who assume they already know everything in it, it is often closely read by visitors trying to figure out what is going on. For visitors especially, it's "the program" for the church service. As such it should clearly help people understand what is going on during worship and briefly inform them of upcoming events. For everyone, its greatest value is as a guide to what is happening now.

Though bulletin inserts  may be kept, most church goers don't keep their bulletins; they are usually placed in the trash after the service or tossed by midweek at the latest. It doesn't matter how much white space or how incredible your graphic design, these are throw-away publications.

Practical application: Though much emphasis is often placed on the looks of the bulletin to impress visitors with what a great church they are visiting, a more important channel for impressing visitors is your people.

Few visitors return to a church because the bulletin greatly impressed them, but the kindness, friendliness, and interaction of people is the most powerful Sunday morning communication channel.

The bulletin should not get in the way of understanding, but it should explain and welcome. People come back for the message and the people, not to see what great graphic design will be in the bulletin for the coming week.

PowerPoint presentations: most useful for immediate, visual, emotional impact. Most powerfully used for worship, meditation, or to illustrate an application or lesson. Also, helps focus people on the sermon if notes are being taken. Not helpful for lasting memory of details.

Practical application: PowerPoint presentations are not adequate substitutes for written announcements. People might remember the cute picture of their kids on the screen, but they won't remember the time, location, cost, and program content of the special event coming up at the end of the week from a PowerPoint slide alone. As a one-time exposure to an event, they are fine, but they must be used in conjunction with additional channels of communication (bulletin, inserts, website entries, email) that provide specific event details.

Websites: information sources for both immediate impressions and for in-depth research. If not constantly updated, they lose much usefulness. Multi-media impact varies widely on the ability of the audience to receive it.

Practical applications: Survey your church to see how many people access it and how they use it. Do they use it at all and do they have the bandwidth to access multi-media feature such as video, streaming audio, etc.? Do you ever update them know what is on the website and how to use it? That would be a useful Sunday morning use for PowerPoint.

Don't forget that many unchurched people check out church websites before visiting-does your home page speak to them? Search engines enable people to jump into your website without visiting the home page and there are two practical applications to people coming to your site via a search engine: 1) remember that the web is not a linear communication channel. People can jump in any way and go to any section, so don't create a website as you would a book or article. 2) With this in mind, do people always know where they are wherever they might enter your website? Can they easily return to the home page or to other sections of interest? Does every page make sense even if people don't know what comes before or after it?

Email publications: great for those who have and check email regularly, of no use to those who don't.

Practical application: contrary to what those of us assume who work in the church and with computers, not everyone checks their email continuously. Not everyone has email. Of those who have web access, a minority have broadband access. A recent (July 2007) report from the Pew Research group showed that broadband internet access is available to less than half of those with computers (more on this later in the article).

Refrigerator Reminders: these can be in a variety of formats: postcards, flyers, bulletin inserts, any communication that is designed to end up on what is defacto the communication central for every home today-the refrigerator. These communication pieces are essential links to actually getting people to events when they contain the actual details of time, location, cost and availability of child care because they can be immediately accessed without having to turn on a computer or look for another publication.

Practical application: these communication pieces aren't as exciting to create as a website or video, a multimedia PowerPoint presentation or a colorful bulletin cover, but these pieces are vital if we really want people to show up for events that can change their lives.

The listing of communication channels and sub-channels within them could go on, but the most important point thing to remember first, is that there is no one communication channel or piece that can do it all; no one is "better" than any other. All are needed. In addition, you need a variety of high-tech and low tech.

For example, in a recent seminar, the communication team approached me before the seminar began and shared their great frustration because as they said, "We have a website, the bulletin, which is beautifully done, and we put the newsletter in a PDF email format and still nobody comes to our events and they say they don't know what is going on."

Though I sympathized with their situation, I knew immediately what was happening. Though I'll explain this more in detail below what was going on is that they were putting out communications in the channels they preferred (primarily web and PDF email newsletter), but they were not the channels easily accessible to or preferred by many people. Few folks will wait for a large PDF to download with a dial-up connection or will go on to the website to hunt for details of where to go for a youth activity. A postcard or bulletin insert on the refrigerator with scheduling details for church activities that week would have been much more useful. If most of the youth group members have cell phones a text message would be useful.

Be aware of the inherent preferences of communication creators

In my seminars I remind church leaders of the "church office bubble," the world those of us who work in the church live in and for us, when we are in it is so easy to forget what life is like for those who do not live in our familiar bubble. We know understanding and overcoming our tendency to use jargon and talk to ourselves is foundational to outreach communication success, but it is also important that we are aware of our unconscious preferences in communication channels and how these affect the communication of our message.

The issue in choice of communication channels is that those who create communications, by their natures and jobs, are often "early adaptors." We love the technology; we want to try all the latest and greatest tools. Not only do we love it personally, but there is often subtle peer pressure to learn and create with the latest technology. These tendencies are understandable, but we have to be careful that they do not negatively influence our communications.

For example, I recently discovered YouTube and put up my channel on it (www.youtube.com/yvonprehn). I had great fun and was so excited about it, but fortunately, in the midst of my excitement, I followed some of my advice wherein I am always telling people to survey, to test, to actually ask their audience if what you are doing to communicate actually works for your people. So I did, I asked my email newsletter subscribers for their opinion on my YouTube offerings.

Many people loved them-some for some reasons I wouldn't have expected. In addition to simply being able to "see" what I was teaching, a number of people said they liked hearing my voice, that it made the teaching more human. An even larger number of respondents however, said that they couldn't access YouTube because they didn't have a high-speed connection and others said that though they liked it, that it really helped when I also wrote out articles that they could download and give to church staff people to read.

The issue of bandwidth is something those of us "early adaptors" and professional communication creators like to forget about. We have it; we have the RAM; we have the computers that make streaming video and complex graphics fun to create and view. But the majority of the people in our congregations still don't.

According to a recent study (July 2007) by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, broadband adoption by home computer users is actually slowing, down to a modest 12 percent over the last year, from a 40 percent increase the year before. Currently 47 percent of the general population has broadband at home and in rural areas it is down to 31 percent. When you factor in how many people in your church still do not have computers at home (and more than you imagine don't), even under ideal conditions, if they want to and take time to look at your web offerings, far less than half of your audience will receive them.

Bottom line: create what you love because some of your audience will love it also, but in addition, love your church audience enough to create more communication channels so that the people with the slowest computers and those without computers will also hear and have the opportunity to respond to the communications from your church.

Biblical considerations in multi-channel communications

Technology aside, we must always remember that those who name Jesus as Lord, must always keep our eyes on Jesus and his Word as our guide for every aspect of our communications.

One theme woven throughout the fabric of the Bible is the concern of our Creator for the poor. There will always be inequalities (in everything from finances to bandwidth) in our fallen world and there is always the temptation of those who have much to ignore those who have little. There is always the temptation for those who minds work quickly to be impatient with those who learn slowly; for those who love the new to disdain those who fear it.

If Jesus is Lord, we may create an incredible multi-media website and full-color email blasts; but we make sure there are also postcards, large-print bulletins, and handouts and personal phone calls for those more comfortable with these channels of communication.

Remember, doing this sort of servant work for "the least of these" is doing communication work for Jesus. He who created and named all the stars is not impressed with our technical abilities; but when we pour our hearts out in communication projects both complex and simple to make sure everyone is informed and shown love by the time-intensive work required-those channels of communication merit his favor.